The fence that Israel is building along the length of the West Bank should appall me. Fencing in the Jewish state, after all, mocks Zionism's promise to free the Jews from the ghetto. And fencing out the Arab world violates the hope that Israel will one day find a cultural and spiritual place in the Middle East--a hope that once took me on a yearlong pilgrimage into mosques in Israel and the West Bank, as a way of connecting to my neighbors' prayer lives

Rich frat boys like George Bush often don't do military service because they have more options. The lack of options is a real thing that can't be erased with a lot of abstracted, two-dimensional, libertarian, we-are-all-free-agents nonsense.

In spite of constant reassurances about the term "democracy" one is rarely allowed to criticize the country of Israel without suffering some punishing consequence for it. If you are a Jew you may survive the accusations of anti-Semitism but if you consistently express yourself online in any dissidence about Israel's current politick, you will probably not be immune to cyber attack.